TIM BAKER

This week is when the fatigue set in – specifically start of this week and towards the end of it – a combination of some rather odd fan(tasy) themed prompts, life getting in the way, and a feeling this was getting a bit too much for me. Despite that, I was determined to continue even if it did mean I missed the odd day, and I did some of the best work of all Inktober so far in this week…but first I had to get over the frankly awful prompt ‘Legend’.

As with Bait before it, I turned it into a joke meme, about all the urban legends, and a joke on the word legend – which is also the key to a map. I certainly was not going to either draw fan-art or elves waving swords. Nope.

The next was ‘wild’ – perfect for what I do. Problem was, that day I was picking up my printer and attending meetings so spent most of the day on a bus, not conducive to either drawing or wild things apart from mad drivers and customers. I did spent two separate half-hour slots sitting outside quietly hoping the wild birds I feed would arrive. Apart from the brief appearance of our friendly neighbourhood robin, who chirped at me for a while, nothing else turned up. So this 1-2 minute sketch had to do.

So feeling that the last few days were a bit crap, the onus was on me to try and provide something good. Next theme was ‘ornament’ – oh dear.

Until I remembered Blokey, the hundred-year old African statue John brought me from South Africa, and who watches over us. It suits ornament twice – being a literal ornament as a sculpture, but also that I ornament it with votives of my festival and event lanyards and bracelets – from Duckie to Pride to Glastonbury. I feel he wants to be dressed up in return for watching over us.

Anyway I realised I’ve not really done much Posca work at home, I see them as a life drawing thing, and I rarely do still life. Also I wanted to work large, so I brought the easel in and treated some of my wallpaper liner with black gesso – this is nearly A1 size.

After that I was on a roll – the next prompt was ‘Misfit’ – well I was actually tempted to do a fan art picture of Ben Volpeliere-Pierrot (Misfit! Misfit! Breakdance on the Street! *ahem*) as a parody of those Inktober fan pics, or myself in a beret looking 1980’s and cool.

But as I don’t have a beret and can’t look cool, I settled on a self-portrait as I am a misfit. And a misshape (brought up on a diet of broken biscuits, yeah!). I ordered this Kuretake 2-in-1 wash brush pen well before Inktober and it only arrived earlier this week, so I had to have a go with that, and I filmed it:

I sort of messed up the left eye (maybe I didn’t give it enough TLC, haha) but really proud of the right one. Eyes really stress me out like ears, if I do them at the start they end up being too large (hold that thought) but if I do them at the end there’s a distinct possibility I’ll mess up a great drawing at the eleventh hour. I can really recommend the Kuretake brush, if you can afford the wait (or pay a bit more and not wait nearly a month! It came on a very slow boat from Japan, I’m guessing a junk or chokkibune surfing a giant Hokusai tsunami).

Then it all had to come back bang to earth with one of the silly prompts…’Sling’? ‘Sling’? Really? Sorry I am not going to start drawing pictures of arms in slings or indeed a Singapore Sling. There is only one thing I think about when I hear the word ‘sling’ and it’s not PG rated. So hence a quick sketch of a sling – not mine I hasten to add, I don’t have the space 😛 – white on black with Dr PH Martin Bombay ink.

Silly Inktober – stand in the corner, I’ll whip you later…unless you enjoy that?

Day 20 was ‘tread’ – now sadly this coincided with another busy period, of attending the Affordable Art Fair, putting out another podcast, and doing lots of other things. So it came out a few days late with the next prompt.

All I could think of other than shoes or tyres which interest me not was ‘Where Angels Fear To Tread’ – not only a novel by EM Forster but originally a quote by Alexander Pope. But where do angels fear? Hell I guess. I’d just seen the William Blake exhibition (not bad, too much of his early stuff and contemporaries, not enough meat) and googled his angels.

Most are pretty boys – Albion Rose et al – but one is bearded and also has a Dante connection, it’s William Blake’s illustration for the Recording Angel from The Divine Comedy, so probably set in hell. Close enough for me. It was the last thing he worked on, he didn’t finish it before his death but quite a few really famous pieces come from it.

So I did my version in dip-pen in waterproof Indian Ink, and then tried to match the watercolour. Tried is the correct term, because not sure if the original was very low key / light or faded? I think I got close. I gained new respect for William Blake after this, although still think his anatomy could be better sometimes!

And finally we had ‘Treasure’. Oh boy…images of pirates and chests ahoy! I thought about what do I really treasure? (yes I go deep on these themes, no point in just doing something frivolous if you can avoid it). I decided that my artworks were the only really valuable thing I own, and especially the very few sculptures I have done or pottery works.

So I drew a dip-pen study of a clay head I sculpted, and a clay bowl I made – incidentally at the pottery that got my mother into creating pots late in her life, and the head was fired in the small kiln she bought as a result. I then used the Dr PH Martin Bombay Inks more like paints, rather than the translucent effect last week for ‘overgrown’, this time mixing in white if needed. I think it worked far better!

I also really enjoyed doing a still life for a change, like with ‘Ornament’ so I plan to do more of these!